Our Heritage
The story of Titchmarsh & Goodwin
For more than 100 years at Titchmarsh & Goodwin we have been handcrafting beautiful wooden furniture in our workshops in Ipswich, Suffolk.
Our highly skilled team of cabinet-makers, woodturners, carvers, gilders and French polishers are simply the best in the business at making furniture in the traditional way using the finest oaks, maples and walnuts.
As befits a company of more than 100 years standing, we have accumulated a vast library of basic designs in our studio archive – some 45,000, plus, from simple oak coffee tables and dressers to fully fitted, panelled libraries in multiple woods.
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That means that if you contact our friendly design office, we can often draw on these archives and customise these pieces or schemes for your room today. We can change size, design, embellish with crossbanding, carving or gilding or create a piece entirely from scratch.
We still do most of our drawings by hand, which we then scan in and email to you for approval before your piece is made to order in our workshop in Ipswich. You can visit your piece as it’s being made at any time and we can even give you a copy of the drawing afterwards.
As each piece of furniture is made from scratch, we can create absolutely anything you want from a panelled library to a fully fitted bedroom or dressing room, from the most glamorous of veneered cocktail cabinets to the simplest of rustic refectory tables.
Our wood is seasoned for years to cope with the dual demands of heating and air-conditioning. We can produce single pieces or can take on complicated built-in furniture projects for the whole interior, using multiple woods. We have fitted our furniture everywhere from Shanghai to Vietnam and New York.
We can match to a client’s existing pieces or create showstoppers from scratch using solid wood and veneers from traditional flame mahogany to exotic grey eucalyptus.
We are proud to be still hand-making in Britain using a workforce that is a mix between experience and youthful dynamism: craftsmen with skills honed on the bench for more than 50 years and young apprentices picking up traditional crafts from French polishing to wood carving and gilding.
We love the fact that we are keeping these traditional hand-crafting skills alive in an age of mass production and uniformity. We love the fact too that these skills are being handed down to the next generation. But most of all we’re proud of the quality of workmanship and beauty of finish that we can achieve with our workforce. We make furniture in the same way that its been made for hundreds of years, but made to suit the modern environment with its heating and air conditioning.
The roots of this family business go back to the 18th century. Around 1770, Samuel Goodwin, a carpenter, in Woodbridge Suffolk, sent his son George to the workshops of a London cabinet maker.
On his return, with all the prestige of a London apprenticeship, George set himself up to design and create fine furniture for the affluent burgher’s of East Suffolk. He unconsciously founded a dynasty of cabinet and clock case makers working as individual craftsmen in and around Ipswich. But it took more than 130 years for this passion for craftsmanship to develop into something more.
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In 1920, his descendant, Gordon Goodwin and Lawrence Titchmarsh founded the company that over 100 years on, still thrives in Trintiy works, in Ipswich’s Back Hamlet.
The company remains a family business, currently owned by Jamie Cooper and his wife, Jennie Blackbourn.
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Jamie started working for T&G in 2005 as a junior draftsman. Under the guidance of Peter and Jeremy Goodwin, he progressed from junior draftsman to senior designer and eventually General Manager. When the company was sold to a Russian gentleman in 2011, Jamie stayed on as General Manager, and fortunately found himself in a position to buy the company, under a management buyout scheme in 2016.
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Jamie felt that it was essential to keep such a unique and historic company in British ownership and has fought to hold on to the traditions that make T&G so special.
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Now, with the support of his wife, Jennie, Jamie is leading T&G into the 21st century, with the aim of making the company future proof for generations to come.
Titchmarsh and Goodwin remains unique in Britain, in employing under one roof some of the country’s most gifted woodturners carvers, cabinet makers and French polishers. It is proud to have an impressive client list, including not only British but international clients including the King of Norway and emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia.